How agents can help young adults facing ‘emotional’ housing crisis 

Over the past several years, the mortgage rate "lock-in" effect, rising home prices and low inventory have been just a few of the factors making homeownership feel increasingly out of reach for many Americans.

With these in mind, it's important for real estate agents to help potential buyers see the pathways to homeownership available to them, HomeServices of America President and CEO Chris Kelly said during a July 16 webinar moderated by Real Estate News President Mitch Robinson.

Guided by a white paper recently published by HomeServices, the two industry leaders discussed the biggest barriers consumers face in today's housing market — and how agents can help.

Buying a home is harder than ever, Americans believe

Although the industry's focus has lately been on seller choice amid the slew of new listing options flooding the market, Kelly argued that buyers have been the ones facing mounting challenges since the 2008 financial crisis. To underscore the point, he highlighted a 2026 Gallup poll — which found that about 9 in 10 Americans say buying a home is harder now than it's ever been — cited in the white paper.

The housing crisis becomes an "emotional topic" as younger generations grapple with how to become homeowners, Robinson said, with some wondering if reaching that goal is even possible.

The number of agents capable of helping their clients and their clients' children buy homes will likely shrink by about half over the next 5-10 years because of the barriers younger generations face, Kelly said.

Long-term impacts of delayed homeownership

Many young adults today are delaying homeownership, often due to affordability concerns. But the longer a young adult puts homeownership off, the more severe the wealth impacts may be over the course of their life.

Individuals who become homeowners by age 30 will have a 22.5% higher net worth by age 50, according to Realtor.com data cited in the white paper. But for those who wait until 33-37 to buy, that net worth gain is cut in half (11.2%), and consumers who wait until after they're 43 will see no measurable net worth gains.

Still, Gallup poll data shows that only 29% of non-homeowners ages 18-34 think they will become homeowners in the next five years. "The vast majority of Americans' wealth is the equity they have in their home," Kelly said. "When that equity is either created later in life or not created at all, it has all kinds of long-term implications going forward on how [financially] healthy that person is going to be when they hit retirement age."

Dispelling myths

Most young adults still aspire to become homeowners, even if the math to get there looks different than it did 10-20 years ago. "We have to bridge that gap between what the perception is today versus the reality of getting them into a home tomorrow," Kelly said. 

One way agents can do that, the CEO said, is by dispelling the myth that buyers need a minimum down payment of 20%.

Another prevalent myth is that buying a home is always more expensive than renting, Robinson added. Down payment and equity considerations aside, many renters may find that if they move from a city's center, they could have the same monthly payment for a house as they would a rental — and with a home, they'd gradually build equity.

Industry 'over-focused' on a strategy that may scare buyers away

When it comes to the pre-market and private listings debate, one argument that has been made for new listing options that don't show certain insights — like days on market or price cuts — is that these statistics can harm a seller's bottom line.

But Kelly believes the industry is "over-focused" on these concerns, arguing that the data doesn't actually show that these insights cause sellers meaningful harm. The industry's "over-focus" on sellers and on the growing promotion of private listings are separate but synced issues that Kelly said have the compounded effect of making homebuying harder on buyers — and may scare them away.

"You are choosing to bring your house on the market; you are asking buyers to come forward and purchase the product that you have, limiting the amount of information that that person would have," Kelly said. "To me, I think [that] pushes more buyers potentially away."

Low inventory? Or concealed listings?

The rise of private listings may also be fueling misperceptions about how much inventory is for sale.

Although private listings may not be the source of low inventory woes, they could inadvertently exacerbate the problem, Kelly said. When real estate portals came to prominence, he noted, the industry discovered "one of America's favorite pastimes": that consumers enjoy looking in one place at the home listings in their current — or dream — market.

About 70% of sellers are also buyers, Kelly noted, and thus similarly benefit from being able to easily access all for-sale listings. Suppressing insights like days on market or price cuts is like selling someone a car without revealing its mileage, he argued.

Stress agents can help alleviate

Despite the disruption that has impacted the industry in recent years, "the consumer has still very much tightly embraced the real estate professional," Kelly said. What troubles Kelly is that the term "stressful" is often associated with buying or selling a home. He wondered whether the industry's debate about pre-market and private listings is helping relieve stress or adding to it.

"We should be arbiters of bringing stress levels down when someone's thinking about buying or selling — because it's already an emotional process — as opposed to injecting more stress and uncertainty into the process, which seems to be happening," Kelly said.

"The data shows that the consumer is absolutely feeling that increase in uncertainty and that increase in stress as they think about getting into or out of the market," he added.

So how should agents deal with a distressed buyer? Combat "feelings with facts," Kelly advised. "When you sit individually with them and you say, 'OK here is your path to [homeownership],' that person will be surprised that the path is actually easier and shorter and more affordable than what they think."